


Master, Consort, and Emperor Ascendent

by Wandering_Swain



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi
Genre: Accidental Voyeurism, Awkward Flirting, Dream Logic, F/M, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Interrogation, M/M, Multi, Nightmare Fuel, Nightmare Gore, Politics, Pregnancy, Voyeurism, Workplace Sex, Yeah Armitage has a wife, peace treaties
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-05
Updated: 2018-01-05
Packaged: 2019-02-28 12:51:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13271805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wandering_Swain/pseuds/Wandering_Swain
Summary: Hux catches Supreme Leader Kylo Ren "interrogating" their prisoner, the scavenger, Rey.





	Master, Consort, and Emperor Ascendent

After twenty hours without sleep, cobbling together a report he was sure Supreme Leader Kylo Ren would only partially absorb as he delivered it, General Armitage Hux entered Kylo Ren’s office to discover him interrogating Rebel scum Scavenger Rey. She was bent over a stainless steel table, her golden back exposed and dotted with sweat. Her hair was plastered to her forehead with perspiration. 

She panted, Hux realized. She didn’t appear to be choking due to the Force, but she was panting.

Kylo Ren stood behind her. His black gloved hand was pressed between her shoulder blades. His dark eyes were wide. He, too, had hair out of place from the sweat of his ministrations. One of those black locks hung over his scar. “Hux! What do you want?”

Hux held up his tablet in front of his face. “Our meeting, Supreme Leader. Did you forget?”

“I am busy!”

“With interrogation, yes!” But was it that? Briefly, Hux allowed his eyes to wander over the edge of the tablet.

Not only was the scavenger’s back exposed, so was the curve of her buttocks. Pale. Obvious tan lines from the Jakku sun, months later. Kylo Ren partially hid the curve with his body, clad in black—

\--except for the V of white flesh at his front. Under where his belt buckle should be. That was unclasped. Hux could see that, now. The forest of black pubic hair. The way it led to what was buried inside the Rebel.

She let out a jagged gasp. Her eyes were aimed in Hux’s direction, but they did not seem to see him there.

Kylo Ren pressed his spread hand to her face, bisecting her open, gasping mouth. His fingers found purchase across her lips and between her teeth. This seemed to be how he could silence her to the best of his abilities as he, too, was in the throes of his, well.

His interrogation.

Yes.

Hux broke his stare. Bowed. His father had always taught him to offer nothing but respect to one’s superior and he did not look forward to being on the receiving end of another Force choke even if that no longer appeared to be Supreme Leader Kylo Ren’s regular practice. “I will come back later, Supreme Leader.”

“Two hours.”

“Sorry?”

“I will be done with this in two hours,” Kylo Ren said.

The scavenger let out a soft cry. Kylo Ren’s fingers now moved across a half closed eye and the length of her lightly freckled nose. He thrust his hips without looking at her. She snatched one of his fingers between her teeth again and, this time, bit.

If he regarded it with anything other than the merest annoyance, Kylo Ren said and did nothing. His nostrils flared.

“Two hours. Yes.” Hux glanced down at his tablet. Even though he had spent hours going over the reports, merging them together into a cohesive narrative of where the Rebels were hiding, they no longer made sense to him. They were just symbols across a screen.

Two hours later, Kylo Ren addressed him as Field Marshal instead of General. He informed Hux there would be a ceremony.

In his private quarters, later, Hux called his wife, Jellica.

She was home, which caught him by surprise. He thought he would leave a message, but no, she appeared in the holo projection. The video gave her dark, brown, smooth skin a blue glow. Her dress was long, elegant, gauzy along her thighs but otherwise regal and appropriate, and he suspected she was about to go out to one of her galas. Her black hair was teased into an afro, piled high and pinned with a silver, rounded headpiece that looked like a crown.

“Armitage?” She blinked. Her long eyelashes were decorated in silver paint. It sparkled. “Dear, has something happened?”

Hux vaguely remembered having asked an assistant to buy the crown for her, knowing only she had wanted it and that husbands ought to buy their wives what they ask. “Jellica, you look beautiful.”

She smiled, a half moon cutting across her round, soft face. “You called me just to say that?”

“And that I love you.”

“Oh! Nothing important, then.” She winked.

He snorted. The laugh brought him more fully to himself. He saw now that he had been deeply unsettled until he called her. “Darling, I’ve received a pay raise.”

“You have?”

“Yes. I’m a Field Marshal for the First Order, now.”

She was all delight and went on to say that, of course, he had always deserved that and better, hadn’t he? Supreme Leader didn’t know who he had on his hands. Armitage was the son of a military instructor, had come from a long line of strategists and military geniuses much like Jellica’s own family, at least on her mother’s side. Kylo Ren owed him more attention. Armitage ought to be his protégé, she said.

For a moment, Hux imagined pinning Jellica down the way the scavenger had been pinned. Being taken from behind. The tensed muscles of her back picked out in light as she cried beneath him.

“You look pale.” She studied him. “Would you like me to call again later? After the Windersons’ ball?”

“That’s not needed,” he said. “Just nerves. Why don’t I put in for shore leave a month from now, perhaps? I’d like to see you.”

“Of course you’d like to see me. I’m very important, you know. Wife of a Field Marshal!” She preened.

A week later, Hux had another one-on-one meeting scheduled with Kylo Ren. He steeled himself accordingly.

He did not see the scavenger in the office. No, it was just Kylo Ren, at his iron desk. He now had Hux’s tablet in front of him and was reviewing it. He didn’t stand. “Thank you for sending this.”

“Yes, sir.” Hux could do this, he told himself, firmly. “I believe the evidence points to a spy among the ranks of the First Order. For the past few days, they’ve approximated our weakest fronts. One of our power stations was down for maintenance and they slipped in, planted a bomb, told everyone to evacuate the base, and exploded it.”

“And this points to a spy among our own?”

“It was a maintenance call that wasn’t scheduled until the day before. Not only is there a spy present, he works fast.”

“I see. Keep going.”

Hux frowned. “That’s it. That’s the evidence I have.”

Something was off about the office, Hux realized. He could hear a soft, murmuring sound. Not like someone was talking, but humming.

Kylo Ren, who seemed to have something on his mind, pushed the conversation forward. “What do you propose we do?” 

Hux was pleased with this question. “Look for the culprit, but subtly. There were only ten individuals who knew about the scheduled maintenance. I’ll start from there. Do I have your permission to question them?”

“No.”

“Ah! Yes. Then they’ll figure out we’re onto them.”

“Yes.”

“So, perhaps, instead, I should make profiles on the ten individuals—eight, actually, not including you and myself.”

“Yes.”

Hux went on, encouraged. “I’ll find out if they have anything on their profiles worth a look, a black mark, and interview them about that. What do you think?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll put that in a report for you.”

“Yes.”

“Perhaps I’ll have it by this time next week?”

There was that sound, again. Not a hum anymore, no. Something wet. A sort of slurping. Licking, maybe.

Then: a sigh. A soft, burbling sigh, too.

Kylo Ren gripped the edge of his iron desk tightly. His fingers with effort.

Under the desk, Hux saw the tips of sandaled feet poking out from beneath the desk. Someone was kneeling there.

Oh.

Right.

“Thank you, sir. I will see you next week.” Hux said nothing else and turned to leave. He did not wait to be dismissed and, to his lack of surprise, was not caught on it.

He didn’t get promoted this time, though he was sure Kylo Ren knew that he knew. 

He didn’t call Jellica. The idea that she would know that he knew something that Kylo Ren knew that he knew was too much. It threatened to melt his brain out of his ears.

No, instead, Hux had what he hadn’t had in a very long time: a nightmare. Since joining the First Order, he always slept easily. He went to bed every night convinced that what he did was correct, that he was following the codes and wisdom of the Empire. He was bringing justice to the universe, giving those who deserved power their due. He had bad dreams, sometimes, but not the night horrors that had woken him as a child, crying, so that his father would hit Hux in the face before sending him to bed.

In the dream, the scavenger was naked and lying on a table. A desk, but longer, like a table from an operating theater. Kylo Ren was fully clothed and bent over her. He sucked one of her breasts, rolling the nipple along his tongue.

He pressed his gloved hand between her thighs and began to fuck her with those fingers. “This is where I’ll skewer you,” he told the scavenger.

“Oh! Oh, sir!” If it was in anguish or pleasure, Hux could not tell. Perhaps it was both.

“You deserve to be cooked well,” said Kylo Ren, who pulled out a sharp carving knife from under the table head. He cut into the girl and when she bled, it wasn’t blood, but the sticky ichor of jelly filling.

He sawed a piece out of her and her eyes rolled back.

Kylo Ren tasted the bit of her flesh.

When he noticed Hux, he frowned. “You can have some.”

Hux shook his head. “I don’t want any, sir.”

“But doesn’t she look good?”

The candy red blood slid out of the scavenger’s mouth, slightly ajar.

Kylo Ren’s face changed. His frown became rigid as he glanced down at the scavenger and then up at Hux. “Are you afraid I’m hurting her?”

“No! No.” Hux felt his heart hammering. Any moment, he would wake from this nightmare, and his father would charge in, ready to slap him for crying. “She’s the enemy. She’s weak. Weakness deserves to be killed.”

Kylo Ren considered this.

The scavenger opened her eyes. She smiled at him, her teeth sticky with pretend red. “Does it bother you I’m not dead?” 

“Shh.” Kylo Ren told her.

She giggled. “I’m trying! I’m not very good at games. I told you.”

“You’ll have to get better.” He held down her hand and brought down the knife across her wrist. When he held up the orphaned limb, it dripped with that candy blood. He sucked one of the fingers and looked at her. “Mmm.”

The scavenger laughed. “No fair!”

Hux awoke, sweating. He couldn’t get back to sleep. Through out his next shift, he was wretchedly tired.

But his fear, his nerves, dissolved. 

He sent a message to Kylo Ren’s secretary. He wanted to meet regarding, he said, “interrogation practices.”

To Hux’s surprise, the Supreme Leader not only accepted the meeting, he scheduled it as soon as possible.

This time, Kylo Ren didn’t sit behind a desk. He dressed very formally, even, and stood alone in the center of the office with his hands behind his back.

Hux bowed. “Supreme Leader, I want you to know this right now. I don’t think I’m a clever man.”

Kylo raised an eyebrow. He looked almost amused, which was a strange expression on his face, to be sure. “You’re not?”

“No. I’m not. I don’t know when a test is a test. But I am loyal and once I choose a path, I’m loyal to that path.” Hux breathed deep. This was hard, but it was necessary. “So you may interrogate--you may use, sir, any prisoner of war as you see fit. I trust your wisdom. I will not interfere.”

Kylo Ren’s brief amusement was snuffed out. “Is that so?”

“It is. Yes.” Hux felt shaken because this was not the acceptance he had pictured in his mind, or even the impatient dismissal.

“Hux, I understand loyalty is of importance to you. I understand you believe it to be a virtue.”

“I do.” 

“But leaders need to be questioned,” said Kylo Ren.

Hux’s jaw dropped. 

“A Supreme Leader, as a leader, should be made aware when he’s doing something wrong.” Kylo Ren began to pace. “That is what I hated so much about training to be a Jedi. The leaders of that damn cult seemed to be unquestioned. Whatever was deemed ‘dark’ was seen as ‘evil,’ when it’s so much more complicated than that.” He lapsed into a stormy silence.

Hux did not interrupt.

Finally, Kylo Ren breathed deep. “I need the honesty of people to keep my own self honest.”

“Then I should have, what, interrupted you? While you were--?” Hux motioned to the table at the side of the room and then the desk. “Would that be my place as a Field Marshal, sir?” 

“That is what I am saying, yes.”

“But you want me to follow your orders.” Hux hadn’t questioned it when Snoke was sliced in half and the scavenger was taken into custody, blamed for it wholly, even though Kylo Ren was the only witness. Snoke’s private guard had been, well, diminished. Cut down. The work of the scavenger, Kylo Ren claimed.

But this seemed to be a different Kylo Ren. “I want you to think, Hux.”

Hux flushed. “Then everyone in the First Order should stop and question everyone else? How would anything get done?” He stopped himself, even pausing to touch his own neck. Waiting. Fearful.

Kylo Ren’s mouth became a line. “I am no longer interrogating Scavenger Rey.”

Hux imagined the girl, choked to death mid coitus, her last vision a world of pain, going gray at the edges and then black. Perhaps, as a scavenger, it wasn’t even painful. Perhaps she was too low, too stupid to understand that she was not an object of desire, but a receptacle of lust. “Good to hear that, sir.” 

“We are negotiating.”

“Oh.” Hux paused. “Were you negotiating—the first time I walked in?”

Kylo Ren’s nostrils flared again. “It was my understanding that if you had a problem with it, you would say so.”

Hux shook his head quickly. “Sir, no. I wouldn’t say a thing. You say a Supreme Leader must lead, but I say the important part of that title is ‘supreme.’”

The frown deepened. Kylo Ren went to his desk and pulled out a new tablet. He tossed it to Hux.

Hux caught it, fumbling. On it was the title, “Peace Accord: Restoration of the New Republic Under First Order Rule.” Below was a document.

The only thing that Hux liked about this particular title were the last four words. “Restore it, sir?”

“You said you don’t question me, correct?”

“No, sir.”

“And you won’t question me on this?”

“No. No, I wouldn’t, sir.” 

“Then I’m afraid I have another promotion for you.”

When Hux called his wife in his off hours, she let out a joyous cry. “Emperor! How can you be Emperor? Am I Empress, now?”

“You are.” Hux felt slight and drained. “Will be, anyway. It’s all happening very quickly.”

“And Kylo Ren doesn’t want to be emperor, himself?”

“He.” Hux cleared his throat. “He has decided he much prefers creating a new, better Jedi.”

“What? Jedi from where?”

He had re-read this part of the accords ten times since their meeting. “With the Rebel woman we captured. The scavenger. She is to become pregnant with him, a new line of Jedi.”

Jellica was silent a moment. Then she smiled. “So if the two of us have a child, then he will inherit this new empire unchallenged, won’t he?”

“He will.”

“Darling.” Her voice was soft, raspy. “I adore you.”

“And I, you.” 

They made plans to see each other on Nobu.

Meanwhile, Hux began to speak to others in the First Order about the Accords. To his shock, no one seemed much bothered by the Supreme Leader taking a scavenger to bed. They seemed far more worried about the arrangement of the First Order taking only the federal government rather than individual city-states. Phasma was especially worried.

“The citizens may very well organize an uprising,” she said. “Then where will we be?”

“With a pile of dead citizens,” Hux insisted. “We’ll of course make an example of anyone who attempts to overthrow me.”

She cocked an eyebrow. It was very obnoxious. “And the rest of the federal government, I assume?”

“Certainly,” he said, and made a note to explain how, exactly, he would do that later.

He sought Kylo Ren’s counsel on the matter. In Hux’s excitement, he arrived at the Supreme Leader’s office unannounced. 

He was not there.

Scavenger Rey was stretched out on a small leather couch he has recently installed. She was clothed and eating berries from a bowl, foot swinging in the air. He saw her throw one into her mouth. When she saw him enter, she automatically threw another and it bounced off her nose. “Emperor Ascendant Hux?” If she meant to make this sound cool or calculated, she did a poor job. There was an obvious scratch in her voice.

“Thank you for the appropriate title, Scavenger.” He felt his lip curl when he said the word. He waited for her to stand.

Something in her eyes went glassy. “Consort.”

“Excuse me?”

“Consort Rey of Jakku,” she said.

“Until the wedding, I imagine.”

“There will be no wedding.” She ate another berry. “You don’t need to get married to have children. And I’m not the marrying kind.”

“Ah, I see.” He wanted to tell her that he hoped she would be satisfied with a life as breeding stock for Jedi. She had betrayed her fellow rebels for it, after all. He certainly had no complaints over the decision. “I will contact Supreme Leader Kylo Ren’s secretary to make an official appointment.”

“If I had to guess, I would say your first promotion to Field Marshal? That was him flirting with you.”

“Excuse me?”

“Flirting. He thinks you’re annoying and adorable, which is just the way he likes them. He said that I am, too.” She balanced the bowl on her stomach, which was a little bigger than he last remembered, as if she were pregnant already. Perhaps she was. Jellica had once told of her sister who had bouts of despair and seeming madness when she became pregnant. “You walked in, saw us, and didn’t pull away. He wanted to see if you wanted us.”

Hux felt blood pounding in his ears. His face was hot. “Please explain.”

“Do I need to? He thought you didn’t leave because you were interested. When he learned you thought you had to stay—that’s what he told me, I guess—that’s when he made you Emperor. Part of me wonders if that’s some sort of apology.”

“Stop it. Right now.”

“Stop what?” She gave him a look of doe-eyed innocence.

He breathed in deep, steadying himself. “Stop lying, whore. Opening your legs for a man who fucks you like meat? You are disgusting, barely a woman.”

She paused, half-way to putting a berry to her mouth. Instead, she dropped it back in the bowl and sat up. “I know what I like. If it makes me a whore, Kylo Ren hasn’t said so. I only know I want him and I want to help him raise our children.” She pressed a hand to her abdomen indicating she was, indeed, pregnant. 

“Do you think you are so wise?” Hux felt nothing but raw contempt, now. “You’ve decided to give away your life to a man who will only be Supreme Leader until our military is dissolved to make way for a new one.”

“I’m aware. I suggested that for the treaty. I heard General Organa was in favor of that more than anything else.” She sat back, extended her feet to the table in front of her, and crossed her ankles. “You may leave, Emperor Ascendant. I wish you luck in finding your way along your path.”

Hux didn’t respond to her. He simply left.

On Nobu, he met Jellica in a resort. They had a penthouse suite with a tub in the bathroom that looked like a hot tub. She met him at the door in a gauzy, yellow dress and, to his shock and pleasure, no underwear. “Take me, darling,” she murmured.

“May I do so from behind?” He whispered into her ear.

She considered this. “Just this once. I don’t prefer it, but I want you so much.”

It occurred to him during their congress that this was the same position he had seen Supreme Leader Kylo Ren take Rey. His wife gasped and moaned beneath him and he bowed to kiss the back of her neck. No, he could not imagine calling her a whore. Instead, “Empress” was all he murmured.

She came.

Afterward, Hux thought again of the scavenger afterward. He wished desperately to purge her sweat slick back from his mind. Whether or not she believed she was giving herself over to a man for her own interest, she was clearly debasing herself. “What is it that drives women to want, love?”

Jellica stirred. She kissed his cheek. “We want the way men want. Sometimes it’s the things we should have, sometimes not.” She ran a finger down the center of his chest, along his orange spread of hair. 

He chuckled. “You shouldn’t have wanted me? Is that what you’re saying?”

She paused. “Did you forget? My father didn’t want us married.”

“But that was so long ago! And he gave in, eventually.”

“He wouldn’t have given anything if I didn’t want you, too.” She kissed him, fierce. Claiming.

By the end of the month, the First Order military was completely dissolved. Master Ben Solo, as he was now called, left behind his ceremonial black clothes. He left his offices in a tunic of gray and boots as brown as mud. 

Before Hux’s coronation, there were riots in just about every capital city. Hux informed the federal representatives that their districts ought to enforce local law enforcement, but they each told him that it would violate the strict separation of federal and local government laid out by the accords. 

Emperor Hux attempted to quiet his great empire. A representative from Tattooine pointed out to him that he had no concept of the people who he ruled, of ordinary citizens from educated lawyers to slaves who tried to break free from their shackles.

Hux responded tartly that his wife’s family had once been enslaved on the very planet. Of course he understood.

This comment was not taken as he hoped. The council seemed to think the fact Jellica came from a well off and prominent family, these days, and that she was an heiress in her own right didn’t ground the words in reality. Hux looked more hopelessly lost than ever.

He expressed his outrage to Jellica, but she seemed unsure. “I know what you’re trying to say, Armitage, but you must think through what it is you’re communicating to these people.”

“These people are savages,” he snapped.

The “savages” in the council voted him out. His role was not only taken from him, but retired as a title. Instead, the council voted for a Leader of the Assembly. 

The first Leader, to Hux’s horror, was a Rebel pilot, Poe Dameron.

Feeling as if he were the lowest of the low, Hux drank a lot after that. He found himself thinking again of his old Supreme Leader and the scavenger, but not of catching them in trysts. Oh no.

No, Hux thought of how he had escorted Master Ben Solo off the courier ship, personally. “Thank you for your service, sir.”

“Yes. Of course. You’re welcome” Kylo Ren and Ben Solo were not physically different, either in stature or face, but his voice. Ben Solo, free of the yoke of Supreme Leader, had a softer voice. Less commanding. Drained of its weight. 

He took nothing else with him as he disembarked the ship onto Endor.

On the gang plank to greet him was the scavenger, now Master Rey of Jakku. She wore gray, as well, and not white, as if the Force wasn’t composed of dark and light, but was all one thing that all flowed together. 

This confused Hux to no end. Everyone knew the Force was either one or the other, not both at once, whatever Kylo Ren’s grievances were.

When the man who had been Supreme Leader Kylo Ren wobbled onto the gangplank, she took his hand firmly, and smiled. She was visibly pregnant, now, and walked with a steady stride.

The gray of their robes shouldn’t have disappeared so easily into the forest. Hux tried to track them through the lush green. Whether they would build their new Jedi or simply find other games to play, Hux didn’t know. How strange to be content with so little.


End file.
